


Off Screen

by Sonora



Series: Reload 'verse [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: (for my own fic), Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Living Together, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:24:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1534163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Reload, Chuck and Raleigh decide to take a chance on each other.  But nothing's complete, without Yancy there with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title more or less taken from [this song](http://youtu.be/7qmibgAQoWc) by VNV Nation.
> 
> I don't know. Seems to fit our boys in this particular story.
> 
> I wasn't planning on writing this story, but I was asked. I'm gonna keep it nice and short. But I did promise y'all a happy ending, and I'm going to try to give it to you.

Chuck means to leave.

He does.

Leave, and go to New Zealand, and disappear into the mountains, and just never come back to civilization. Cease to exist. That’s what people like him are supposed to do, aren’t they? Vanish into the sunset, now that the monsters have been slain, the princess saved, or whatever the fuck. He doesn’t know.

Just feels like he should have died in Pitfall.

He can’t shake the feeling that he should have died in Pitfall.

And he’s almost gone - handshakes with what remains of his old crew, an awkward hug with his dad, all his shit turned in at the guard house, nothing really in his ruck as he heads for the Shatterdome doors.

When he sees Raleigh.

Waiting for him.

Planted straight between him, and his way out of this fucking hell of his life.

“Chuck,” and he’s holding those plane tickets again. “Please. Don’t leave here alone. Not again. Please.”

"I'm not a replacement for your goddamn brother," Chuck warns as he approaches, resolve faltering almost before he can gather it. "I won't be... I'm not, am I?"

"You never were," Raleigh whispers, and his eyes are rimmed red as he grinds a palm into one of them. Did he get any sleep last night? He never sleeps very well anymore, just like Yancy, and... "I'm just no good at being alone."

"So I should go with you? For that, because you suck at life, huh?"

"I wasn’t offering to take you with me, Chuck."

"Then what's this, then?” _Why are you here?_

"I want you to have what you need. And if I can be there with you..."

Chuck just stares at him.

"And what about when Yancy comes back?"

"Yancy's not coming back."

"What?" Chuck stammers, and then, pulling himself back together, adds, "so what, I'm second-choice?"

"No! Chuck, fucking hell, you...you're not second-choice. You're not. You never have been.” Raleigh looks away. “I know I have no right, but I... you... I love you, Chuck. I do.”

Chuck stares back. Thinks about it - really thinks about it. Thinks about that big scary thing blossoming in his chest.

 _How’d you know, with mum?_ he’d asked his dad once, back when he and Raleigh had started doing, well, whatever the fuck it was they’d done.

_Four months in. Thought it was casual, tried to convince m’self of it, but... it’s stupid._

_What?_

_She was doin’ her hair one one, just brushing it out, and I remember sitting there in her bed, thinking to myself, this is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with..._

He sucks air.

Max whines at his side.

"No sex."

"That's fine."

"The second you try to touch me, Becket, I'm putting you in the fucking ground, you understand?"

"No sex. Nothing you don't want. Never again."

"Then why do you want to come with me? I'm... I'm no good, I..."

"Baby, you're perfect."

For a moment, Chuck can hear his neurons firing.

Then.

"Well," he hears his voice saying, "I reckon we ought to find a way to stop fighting for when your brother does get back. Can't have his..." _boyfriends, lovers, little brothers_ , Chuck isn't sure what to say and the words won't come anyway "...house boys at crossways with each other."

Raleigh's eyes are clogged and he doesn't try to talk. Just nods back, and smiles.

Hope surges in Chuck's chest.

_When has hope gotten you anywhere, you fucking idiot?_

Raleigh’s smiling at him, like he just won the fucking lottery.

 _Shut up,_ he tells that voice in his head. _Just shut the fuck up._

+++++

Nothing’s easy.

Maybe nothing will ever be easy again.

But somehow, that’s okay.

They buy an old pre-War SUV in Christchurch, mostly because hires are ridiculous and Raleigh says he knows how to fix it. They stock it with provisions and camping supplies, sleeping bags and a tent and food for Max and one of those little propane stoves. There’s no real goal either of them have, and a finite amount of road, but neither one of them have seen New Zealand before; they go slow.

Chuck sees Raleigh looking at his old photo album sometimes, tears in his eyes again, and while the Australian always pretends like he doesn’t notice, he buys his traveling companion a decent digital camera in the next town they pass through, and a little portable printer, and tells him to stop looking like a goddamn kicked puppy.

Three weeks later, there’s a new photo in that album; the two of them at the head of some trail at the base of some mountain.

Raleigh wants to go to Hobbiton, which is evidently still a thing, so they do. Chuck wants to see the ocean, and holds Raleigh’s hand as they stare out across the blue vastness. Max farts entirely too much; they get flats; they both hate Kiwi radio.

They find themselves a little ski town, decent but off the beaten path, and rent a hotel room for a week. Chuck gets drunk, and screams at Raleigh about how unfair it all is, about how he drove Yancy away from them, how _you have no fucking idea what you put me through, Becket!_ Raleigh’s still there in the morning, though, pouring out the last half of the bottle of whiskey he bought them down the toilet. 

“I’m sorry,” Chuck says.

“You’re not wrong,” Raleigh replies.

They spend the rest of the day watching TV. Max curls up between them, and his snores sooth the night’s horros back out to something manageable.

They like the town.

They stay.

There’s an old lodge on the outskirts, near the bus station, that’s just affordable with their portion of the money dad stole from the UN, for the pensions and such that the fuckers never honored. Raleigh says he spent a year in home construction before it bottomed out and he was forced to join the Wall effort; Chuck says they might as well put all that wasted time to use. He learns how to square studs and float drywall and the best way to apply paint, and Raleigh handles all the harder shit, like getting the grease out of the floor in the kitchen and fixing the rotting foundation. It’s just inhabitable by the time the snows come, and they spend their first real night there, huddled in sleeping bags in front of the fireplace.

They wake up cuddled into each other.

Chuck takes the room furthest from Raleigh’s, after that.

By the time ski season is over, they have the lodge almost totally fixed up. They’ve never really talked about it, but they’re both sort of prepping it to be a B&B. Chuck thinks it’s an insane idea - he is not good with people, he’s really not - but Raleigh can cook and they need some kind of income that isn’t dad’s occasional cheques, and so they open.

Some of their guests know them. Some don’t. They get good reviews online - Raleigh is actually really good at cooking, _I used to watch Yancy,_ he says, the one time Chuck asks him about it - and they start converting the large attic space into a bunkhouse style dorm, maybe for the winter, seems like a decent idea, having some hostel space.

Having people around makes it easier to ignore whatever the fuck it is that, fungus-like, seems to be growing between them.

Raleigh, true to his word, never asks anything of him. But there is something. Words left unsaid. Little glances. A longing that’s almost palpable. 

And Chuck doesn’t know what to say - Raleigh’s different now, truly, genuinely different. It’s hard to say how, or what, or why. Like he’s free, maybe, a guy who only knew death finally finding out that the world’s still here, that flowers are still growing and people still living their lives, or maybe that’s Chuck projecting what he feels, because these days, he wakes up and watches the sunrise and doesn’t feel the ache that the drugs left in his blood.

There’s a group of hikers in one night. They’re all in the kitchen, watching some movie, when there’s a special PPDC alert that overrides the broadcast.

Chuck freezes.

That’s what they used to use when...

But it’s not the kaijuu. Not the kaijuu at all.

_Marine biologists have confirmed today that the first humpback whale calf born in the Pacific since 2023 has successfully made the trip south to the Antarctic feeding grounds. This is the most significant development since the end of the war, indicating that the food chain has sufficiently recovered, due to the tireless work of..._

The entire town is out in the streets not twenty minutes later, fireworks going off.

Raleigh slips his hand into Chuck’s.

Chuck knows he’s crying, and he’s an idiot, because it’s a whale.

“At least we saved something,” Raleigh says.

“Yeah, mate. Guess we did.”

Max gets sick, though, that month. The flu, something he ate, Chuck never finds out. The poor boy spends a few days throwing up, stumbling around, looking up at Chuck with shame in his eyes when he messes the floor. Chuck just holds him and promises him it’s okay and the regional vet is going to be there tomorrow to check him out.

He dies in his sleep.

Chuck loses a couple of days. Locks himself in his room and cries and cries and cries.

When he finally comes back, though, it’s to the sound of whining in the kitchen, and there Raleigh Becket is, with a lapful of wrinkly puppies. 

“Mrs. Parson said Max was the dad,” Raleigh says, almost apologetically. “They’re still kind of young so we can’t bring one home yet, but she said I could bring them over, let you pick, just know that Max...” and his voice cracks. 

Chuck thinks about what his dad told him about mum, that one time.

He kisses Raleigh for it. Raleigh, surprised, kisses him back.

But even though they talk about it, sleep together in the same bed a few times with all their clothes on, then move into the same room to free up another for the B&B, it doesn’t feel right.

They still don't fuck. Just hold each other sometimes in the night, breath each other in, but it's not even a matter of wanting or trust anymore.

Because Chuck trusts Raleigh. Somewhere, in all this, he's learned how to do that again. For the first time. Maybe because Raleigh never pushes him, always asks before he kisses him, hugs him and gets hard and pulls away with an apologetic little smile.

And there are days where Chuck wants to go to his knees. 

He does.

But he doesn't.

There’s something missing.

Something they haven’t talked about since leaving the ‘Dome.

Things happen in China. Big things. Terrible things. Things are found; railroads are blown up; Tibet declares its independence; the entire Chinese navy vanishes almost overnight. The country fragments as the UN moves in to play damage control. The sheer extent of environmental devastation is staggering. 

So is the state of the weapons program. 

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Chuck says. “They’ve had a lot of luck cleaning up the Pacific. Maybe they can clean up that, too.”

“Newt’s leading the recovery team,” Raleigh replies, and dumps the cooked noodles into tonight’s soup. “It’ll be fine.”

“All those people just... do you think Yancy is...”

Raleigh’s out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him, before Chuck can say anything else.

Yancy, he figures, can come home now.

Yancy’s got a home to come back to.

Except he doesn’t know where Yancy is.

Doesn’t know where to go to find him, help him, bring him home.

Just like Yancy did for him, all those months ago.

Pay him back, for all that he took.

But it takes dad coming home, for them to figure out anything about it.

+++++

_Last I saw him was a cage match in Sydney._

That’s what Herc had said almost a month ago, sat in front of their fireplace, eating a bowl of warmed-up, leftover stew. Right before he told Chuck that his uncle was dead, and right after Chuck told his dad that their dog had passed.

Thank god for those puppies.

Chuck hadn’t been able to decide, in the end, and Mrs. Parson let them have the entire litter. It was only three pups, but they were awesome, their mom a Frenchie sweetheart and their dad, of course, Max. All girls, but Raleigh had still named them Huey, Dewy, and Louie. Chuck hadn’t gotten the reference, but he had laughed, and then they’d of course had to watch the entire run of Ducktails on Netflix.

A month ago.

Herc’s watching the pups now.

While Raleigh’s far away from the snug lodge he fixed up for his family, all comfortable and warm, something solid he'd been able to put his weight into when all else gave way in his hands like quicksand.

Trapped in a claustrophobic concrete hellhole in Bangkok, watching his brother beat the shit out of another man.

With no idea as to what the fuck he's supposed to do.


	2. Chapter 2

Yancy wins.

Of course he does.

Raleigh always admired how fast his brother took to the Kwoon, how fluid he was in a fight. But this, tonight, it's different. There's no finesse in this, none of the old joy in the flow of it. When they hit the mats together, Yancy's laugh was the loudest sound in the room.

Tonight, he just...

He limps out of the makeshift arena, after he finally drops the guy, a cacophony of cheers rising aorund him that barely sound human. Raleigh can feel his pulse in his temples, a tightness in his stomach, thoughts raging. He's never seen his brother that brutal before, never seen him intentionally hurt somebody that badly. There's blood everywhere. His opponent is being dragged from the floor, limp, no tension in his muscles at all. Shit, did Yancy...

"This is what I was saying," Chuck says quietly, hugged close to Raleigh on their spot on the upper level. "This is why he had to leave before."

"This is why he needs to come back," Raleigh growls, and he barely recognizes his own voice.

This is an abandoned warehouse, or something, found only after weeks of hard work. If they don't catch him now, it might be another month before they find him again, if they ever do; Yancy's gotten good at evading notice, staying off the grid.

Chuck's told Raleigh what he knows, about what Yancy's been doing for Herc.

Herc said it wasn't his story to tell.

_Find your brother, then we'll talk, mate. Promise._

"Split up," Chuck suggests. "Easier to find him in this crowd."

Raleigh, nodding, gives Chuck one last kiss, and heads for the stairs, fast as he can.

He's not letting his brother walk away from him again.

Not ever again.

He loses sight of Chuck almost immediately, and Yancy, five minutes before, but there's still a faint, pathetic echo of the bond they once shared. With the physical pain Yancy's in - one of those things jaeger pilots shared in a battle above all else, something any co-pilot would be able to tune into immediate - he's all but broadcasting his presence to Raleigh. And Raleigh follows it, through the sweaty crowds and out into the sweaty night, humidity hanging like sick fog in the light-smeared streets of Bangkok's docks.

Yancy moves.

Raleigh follows.

Hours, it seems, although it probably isn't that long, before Yancy stops moving and Raleigh finds himself in front of what looks like a hotel, unkempt, worn from years of polluted sea-air. He ignores the man in the lobby who tries to yell at him about paying, and heads up, texting Chuck the address as he goes. Third floor, he can feel it, second door, right there, right...

The door's not locked.

And there's Yancy, crosslegged on a nasty bed, naked but for a pair of boxers, stripping his socks gingerly off. 

The right side of his face is swollen, caked in blood, hair still dark and longer than it has ever been, spiked with sweat. The divesuit scars are prominent, his skin gone pale, a number of some kind stamped into the fleshy part of his left tricep. He's lost weight, muscle; he looks like hell warmed over. And his feet look all wrong, red and swollen and bulging, and...

Raleigh's seen injuries like that before.

"When did you get frostbite?" he asks.

And his brother's shoulders just heave. 

"That does not sound like the hooker I ordered."

"Hooker?"

"No, fuck, you think I'd stick my dick in one of the boys here? It'd probably rot off. Fuck." He squints at Raleigh, tosses his sock away. "What are you doing here, kiddo?"

"Herc..."

"He send you to come get me?" Yancy's massaging his foot; hand still bleeding from the knuckles.

Raleigh flounders; this isn't how he pictured this as going at all. "No, he just told us where you were, or were, when he left you. I figured..."

"You figured wrong, kiddo. I already told him I wasn't fucking interested in coming back to Hong Kong."

"We're not in Hong Kong, we're..."

And Yancy stops. Really looks at him, eye half swollen shut. "We?"

"Yeah," Raleigh says, gut dropping - shit, he said the wrong thing, is saying all the wrong things, he's going to lose his brother again, an... "Chuck 'n' me, moved out to New Zealand. Nice quiet little town, mountains, you'd like it."

"I've had enough of the mountains to last me the rest of my life."

"Yance..."

"You should go, Raleigh."

But Raleigh can't move. Can't think. Has no idea what to say or do, because Yancy's standing up - and fuck, that looks painful, terrible, the way he puts his weight down - and he just knows he's going to get his ass thrown out of this room and he'll walk away, he'll walk the fuck away if that's what Yancy wants him to do, and all of this will have been for nothing.

"Yancy," he breathes again, his brother's hand just coming to rest on his chest.

And then Chuck, storming in from behind, shoves Yancy off. So hard he can't catch himself on time, and he hits the filthy tile, hard.

Chuck's on a tear, though.

"You fucking cunt, the fuck you think, we're going to leave you here wallowing in your fucking misery until you what, kill yourself in one of those fucking fights? You are not staying her, you're coming back with us, if I have to choke you the fuck out and drag you to the jet myself."

Yancy's eyes, from where he's sprawled out on the floor, go wide. Track Chuck, as Chuck stalks over to the one small duffel bag in the corner. "Kid, you know I'm not..."

"You have no fucking idea what you've put Raleigh through, do you?" Chuck demands, and throws a pair of cargo pants at him, from out of that bag. "Or maybe you do, and you just don't care, you selfish prick!"

Raleigh doesn't need what's left of the ghost drift to feel his brother's panic, and he steps in, gets between the two of them. There are tears in Chuck's eyes. "Babe," he murmurs softly, grabbing Chuck's hands. "If he doesn't want to come, I can't make him, I won't. I've put him through enough already."

"But he's here because of you," and Chuck grinds his teeth as those tears start to fall. "He didn't leave me in Lima, I'm not leaving him here, I fucking won't do it, I can't..."

"You two fixed your shit, right?" 

They both turn. Yancy's on the bed again, pulling those pants slowly on. Raleigh realizes he's still holding on to Chuck.

"Umm, sort of?" he tries, and looks at Chuck, who nods. "Yeah, I guess so. Working on it, anyway."

Yancy groans, scrubbing a hand across his battered face, and stands again. Walks straight into the bathroom. Slams the door. Both younger men wait.

It takes a long, long time for him to come out again. 

At least now, most of the blood's gone.

"Spent my life sharing a room with you, Rals," he says, looking at Raleigh. "I'm done with that, you understand me? I get my own space, and you, and you," - this time, pointing at Chuck - "especially you, stay the fuck out of it."

Raleigh's eyes sting, and Chuck tenses in his arms.

"Whatever you need, Yance."

"Okay."

+++++

Yancy's not okay.

Not without his own damage.

But it's not as bad as Raleigh feared it would be, that first night in Bangkok. 

They give him his own room, and don't take any new reservations for a while. They give him the good room, the one on the second level that overlooks the forest, and the sunrise, and has the nice huge bed and the only ensuite in the place. Raleigh tells him it's his, and goes to handle packing some lunches for hikers - for whatever reason, his sandwiches have become rather popular - and comes back a few hours later to see Yancy sitting in the same spot where he left him.

Raleigh dumps little Louie in his lap, gives him a couple changes of spare clothes, kisses his forehead.

"That my sweater you're wearing, kid?" Yancy asks, hands curling around the half-grown pup like it's the only solid thing on the planet.

Raleigh's voice is thick when he answers, "I only took your clothes, when I left the 'Dome."

He comes down for breakfast in the morning, showered and scrubbed, head shaved. Chuck, ever the tactful man that he is, gapes, and Herc cuffs him over the back of his head.

"Got sick of the color," Yancy says, a hand skating over his bare scalp. "Time to let it grown back in blond, huh?"

He knows he shouldn't, but Raleigh doesn't care. Abandons the oatmeal to throw himself into his brother's arms, and Yancy just catches him, squeezes him tight, breathing deeply. Smelling him, Raleigh realizes, and hugs him tighter.

"It's okay, Rals," his brother murmurs, kissing his neck. "It's okay, I'm here, I'm here now."

Whatever demons he's facing, he faces them alone, for a long time. He doesn't quite wake the other guests - who mostly all think Yancy's some kind of PhD student on his gap year - with his nightmares, but Raleigh hears him sometimes, and creeps down to his room, curling up around him in bed. He always leaves before Yancy wakes up; if his brother suspects anything, he doesn't say.

Raleigh wants, so badly, for things to be the way they were before. But just like Yancy's toes won't grow back, he'll never be the same man he was, back when they were twenty-one and twenty-four together and riding high on the top of the world. He might need it - needs his brother to smile, to laugh, to slap him on the ass and tell him to get back to bed, needs for his brother to be that light he always was - but that's not what Yancy needs to be right now, or ever.

Raleigh knows he'll never know just how much he took from Yancy.

He promised himself, when Herc came back and _told them_ , that he was going to give from now on. 

Anything Yancy needs from him, he can have.

But there are some things he can't give Yancy, that Yancy won't take from him. Yancy talks to Herc about where he's been, talks to Chuck a little as well, and after the second time Chuck comes to bed six hours late with a haunted look in his eyes, Raleigh figures it's okay to push.

"I want to know where you've been."

"No, you don't."

"I don't like all these secrets..."

The fight that ensues is one for the record books. Probably the worst screaming match they've ever had as brothers, the most emotionally draining conversation Raleigh's ever had with anyone. It drags out and on, until Yancy finally breaks out the kitchen window, collapsing with a bleeding hand clutched to his chest.

"I couldn't bear the way you'd look at me, if I told you," he whispers, almost too quiet to be heard. "If you'd even look at me."

Raleigh hopes his face doesn't show how badly shaken he is by that, and, gathering his courage, sit down next to him. Lays his cheek on his brother's shoulder.

"You'll always be my superhero."

"I shouldn't be. Not anymore."

"I love you, Yance. Nothing you've done'll ever change that. Please. We're all the family we've got left. Stop pushing me away."

"You don't wanna know."

"Yeah, I do."

Yancy was right - he didn't want to know. He doesn't want to listen. But he forces himself to, because it's what Yancy needs, what they both need, because it's been killing him too, seeing what his family's been going through with no understanding, no way to help. They talk until the sun comes up over the snowy peaks, and Yancy falls asleep.

Chuck helps Raleigh pack his brother back to the borrowed bedroom.

"He should be sleeping with us," he says, as they tuck him in.

Raleigh's too strung out to cry. "Yeah. He should be."

They don't see him until damn near 1400, when they come back from a hike with Max's puppies to find him making chili in the kitchen. Raleigh plops himself down at the little prep table with the month's bills, and tells Yancy that Chuck wants to learn how to make cornbread.

It's the first time they've been able to keep Yancy in a room with them for more than a few minutes at a go.

Chuck tries to apologize for Lima, and Raleigh blurts out how sorry he is about Hong Kong, and they both try to say something about China, and Yancy just gives them both a sad, watery smile and tells them it's okay, that everything's okay, that his feet don't give him much trouble anymore these days.

And somehow, it's like the sun comes out in their foggy little kitchen. Wounds lanced; infection drained.

The first batch of cornbread sucks - how Chuck mixed up salt and sugar is anybody's guess - but the second is decent, and the chili is fucking delicious.

Yancy does most of the cooking after that. 

Things get better.

Things start to heal.

They leave their door unlocked. But Yancy still doesn't come to them.

+++++

Herc doesn't stay. He gets himself his own little place in town, and hires Raleigh to fix it up for him, which they all find hilarious. The old Marshall won't say how much of the UN's money he's got socked away, but it's enough, apparently, to import a four thousand dollar cast iron tub for his bathroom. _These old bones are getting any younger,_ Herc laughs. Chuck just says he doesn't want to know.

Yancy doesn't stay either. Not all the time. He's with them for about six months, and then he's gone, a note stuck under the coffee maker in the kitchen, _don't rent my room, be back in a week._ It's ten days, actually; he's been off trekking, he says.

Chuck's the one who grabs onto him then. Yancy ruffles his hair and kisses his forehead and lets the Aussie cling to him for the rest of the day.

Next month, he does it again.

This time, he comes back with a bad sunburn and a stamp from Vanatu in his passport.

He says he's not running missions anymore, just traveling. Maybe it's true. Yancy always did like to travel. While Raleigh had always craved putting roots down somewhere after his nomadic childhood, Yancy was happiest on the back step of a train, watching the countryside roll away behind them. He doesn't begrudge his brother that wanderlust.

So sometimes he's gone for a few days, other times, a few weeks. His travel gear has its own little cubby in their closet; Raleigh and Chuck check it every morning, to see if he's gone, to see if he's come back. He brings them little gifts sometimes, spices or toys or little handmade trinkets that always have some hilarious story attached. Raleigh spends a couple months apprenticing with a millworker the next town over, and crafts their huge lounge room a set of beautiful floor to ceiling built-ins out of local pine, to hold all the little treasures. Guests love Yancy's travelogues almost as much as Chuck does, and a US publisher even finds out, offers him a book deal.

But no story could ever be as good on the page as it is in the evening, he says, told over coffee by the fire, or under the covers, or out on the deck in the quiet morning, watching the sun raise over a world that the three of them did their damnedest to save.

"Yancy Becket died in the Knifehead attack," he says. "I like not having to be him anymore."

They rent out his room.

He doesn't need it.

Because after the first time he left, and the first time he came back, Chuck just took him by the hand when he was done eating, and pulled him back to their bedroom.

They were both already naked by the time Raleigh finished the dishes.

He remembers closing the door behind him, locking it, leaning on it, watching. Chuck had been braced over him, one hand on the bed, one hand tangled in Yancy's hair, cock already hard and red in the scant space between them, whining in a way that Raleigh had never heard him whine before. Yancy, for his part, was laughing as he kissed him back, the first time Raleigh had heard him laugh since maybe before Knifehead. And some part of him needed to be jealous, wanted to be, but he couldn't summon anything but relief at the sight, a strange species of joy he'd never felt before.

The only thing he'd wanted, since that horrible week in Hong Kong, was for Yancy to be happy again.

And then his brother was looking at him, reaching for him, holding Chuck back with a touch.

"Get over here and kiss me, you idiot."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not perfect, but I'm crying my eyes out at work, so to avoid any more pain this story and these stupid boys, I'm posting it now... Thanks for sticking with me, hope this is happy enough to work.


End file.
